


as you used to be

by julie_slamdrews



Category: Harlots (TV)
Genre: AU, AU Saturday, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Harlots Week
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:28:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 10,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26795884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/julie_slamdrews/pseuds/julie_slamdrews
Summary: Modern university AU in which Lucy goes to Durham University and becomes enamoured with a certain lecturer.Written for Harlots Week - AU Saturday.
Comments: 50
Kudos: 22
Collections: Harlots Week 2020





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

> So I wasn't going to write an AU for Harlots Week because I couldn't really imagine the characters outside of the setting they're in. Then I woke up two hours before my alarm on Friday with this idea fully-formed in my head so I guess this is happening now. 
> 
> Because I only came up with the idea yesterday this is just a very short intro chapter, but I have enough plot mapped out already for 15-20 chapters and the rest will be longer.

The train pulls into the station to a cacophony of sound. Students everywhere, waving banners, chanting, screaming. Someone dressed as a giant badger is having a dance-off with a stag (not a particularly successful dance-off it has to be said as, encumbered by their costumes, they are mostly blundering around and crashing into the people surrounding them). Lucy stares, wide-eyed, at the scene and even the girl in the seat beside her who has spent the entire three hours from London Facetiming ‘darling Tarquin’ deigns to disconnect her call.

Lucy shoulders her rucksack and disembarks nervously into the throng, searching the sea of people for the cardinal-coloured shirts of the Castle reps. Spotting three of them hollering on the far side of the platform, she weaves and darts through the crowd with the expertise gained through eighteen years navigating London at rush hour.

“Castle?” A girl waving a placard bearing the words ‘Floreat Castellum’ beams. “Welcome to Durham! I’m Frankie, and this is Ben and Will.”

The boys, who were previously engaged in bellowing some college song at the top of their lungs pause to greet her with equal enthusiasm.

“We’ll just wait and see if there are any more Castle freshers on this train.” Frankie says and then, eyeing Lucy’s bag, whistles. “Is that all you brought?”

Charlotte had asked similar when she came to see her off and Lucy had snapped back that when she had gone up to Oxford Pa had still been alive to ferry her sixteen suitcases up the M4. Then Ma had cried and Charlotte had offered to procure one of Howard’s cars and Lucy had retorted that she wasn’t taking anything from that man and besides not everyone needs a new outfit for every day of term. And so Charlotte had left in a huff (as she usually did these days, and nine times out of ten because of something Lucy had said) and Lucy had taken the train with everything she needed for the term contained in an 80L rucksack.

She doesn’t explain all of this to Frankie though, just gives a wry half-smile and mutters something about not needing much.

Another few scared-looking teens make their way over to the group and Frankie gives another welcoming spiel.

“And this is…” She trails off, looking sheepish. “Sorry I don’t think I asked your name.”

“It’s Lucy,” Lucy says, and then, needing to practice the sound of her new surname on her tongue. “Lucy North.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few notes on the Durham-specific things I put into this chapter. 
> 
> I went to Durham myself (write what you know and all that) and the giant party on the train platform to welcome the freshers in is a real thing (and in equal parts intimidating and joyous).
> 
> The badger and the stag are both Durham college mascots (St Aidans and Collingwood respectively).
> 
> Cardinal is a shade of red and the official colour of University College (also known as Castle because its main building is....a castle). Also, as I learned while writing this, the official colour of several US colleges/universities, including Stanford. 
> 
> 'Floreat Castellum' is Latin for 'let Castle flourish' and is part of one of the main college songs (also the title of the alumni magazine and the name of the rowing club). 
> 
> Are the notes now as long as the chapter itself? Maybe...


	2. two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm glad people are intrigued by my AU idea! I'm having a lot of fun with this, still mostly setting the scene right now but I promise there will be some action eventually! Hope you enjoy...

It doesn’t take long for Lucy to settle into her new life. By the end of the first week she has learned that it takes her exactly four minutes to climb the stairs to her bedroom on the top floor of the keep (but only two to run down them if she is late for breakfast), that tequila and sambuca should not be combined under any circumstances, that Durham’s history department offers more potential modules than she has hours in the day, and that her accent marks her out.

As it turns out, if she was looking to escape the kind of posh twats who populated her scholarship secondary school she shouldn’t have chosen a university in a literal castle. Conversations overheard in the queue for dinner range from which European port is best for visits on Daddy’s yacht to how many horses is too many horses to this food is too vile and couldn’t we get some pheasant once in a while?

A girl she speaks to on the first night of freshers’ week (who has not one, not two, but three surnames) looks momentarily stunned when she first opens her mouth and then coos something about how delightful it is that the less fortunate are able to attend such a prestigious institution before sweeping away leaving Lucy feeling more than a little like a Victorian orphan.

Luckily, aforementioned scholarship secondary school has left her adept at seeking out anyone who isn’t a posh twat. In this she is aided and abetted by her roommate, a jolly Mancunian girl by the name of Fanny (“don’t talk to me about it, me mam just had to read Mansfield Park when she was expecting”) who can sniff out another Northerner at forty paces (“proper Northerners, not these public school bastards who try to talk southern”). This means that Lucy is still marked out by her accent and lambasted for being a “soft southern jessie” at least twice a day, but it is all in good humour and she is spared endless conversation about second homes and polo.

Given the class of people she is surrounded by, she is surprised that it is a full week before her sister comes up in conversation. She is at dinner and two girls at the table behind are discussing some party at someone’s country house in irritating nasal tones that Lucy is doing her best to tune out when one of them says:

“And did you SEE that girl Howard brought?”

Lucy’s head whips around.

“Apparently they’re engaged,” the other girl says. “Emily was so disappointed, she really thought she was in with a shot.”

The first girl makes a sound of commiseration. “Her manners seemed quite good, considering. Did you hear she was brought up on a council estate. I can’t believe his father’s allowing it.

By this point, Lucy is seriously considering dragging one or both of the girls out of the hall by their hair. She and Charlotte may spend most of their time fighting these days and she may have recently detached herself from her surname, but at heart she is still a Wells woman and Wells women defend their own.

Fanny elbows her in the ribs and she realises she has swivelled entirely in her seat to stare at the girls.

“You OK?” She asks. “You haven’t touched your pudding.”

Lucy looks down at the bowl of apple pie and custard, feeling suddenly sick. She pushes it towards Fanny. “You have it.”

Fanny starts to dig in, then pauses and studies Lucy more carefully. “Are you sure you’re OK? Didn’t think it was possible but you’ve gone even paler than usual.”

“Fine,” Lucy says quickly. “Just can’t stomach apple after all those sours shots last night.”

Fanny brandishes the spoon at Lucy. “That had best not be an excuse to stay in tonight! They’re doing two for £10 on fishbowls at Varsity and I need your help to try all the flavours.”

“I’ll be fine,” Lucy reassures her. “As long as none of them are apple-based.”

Two for £10 fishbowls, as it turns out, is a dangerous concept and as a result Lucy find herself last in a long queue of students looking to sign up for modules in the history department the next morning. When she finally reaches the registration desk, a stern-faced woman whose ferocity is not tempered in the slightest by her ludicrously oversized glasses informs her that only six modules have spaces remaining.

“And I have to sign up for?”

“Six modules.” The woman responds, with the long-suffering expression of someone who has dealt with a lot of crap from students already today and is not prepared to take any more. Lucy decides this particular battle isn’t worth fighting and just slides her student card over the table, rubbing her aching temples as the woman taps away at her keyboard.

She receives a timetable and a bundle of reading lists and storms out, throwing a sarcastic “thank you soooo much” over her shoulder. She only hopes the classes she’s been saddled with are halfway decent.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somehow just about still keeping to a weekly update schedule with this - hope you enjoy!

“I’m a feminist, but…” Lucy complains to Fanny on Thursday evening. “I’d rather not take a module on Women in History if it means getting up before 9am on a Friday and trekking up a massive hill.”

“You could argue that the assault on feminism here is from whoever scheduled lectures on Women in History for 9am in Hild Bede,” Fanny responds. “And if you think this will get you out of downing your wine you have another think coming.”

Lucy looks down, spots the cork floating in her glass and groans. “How have you corked me four times already? They haven’t even served the mains yet!”

Fanny shrugs. “Just better at formal than you I guess. Now down. It. Fresher.”

A cheer goes up from a group of rugby boys seated to their right as Lucy raises the glass to her lips. The second-cheapest wine sold in Castle’s bar (all the cheapest was already sold out by the time they made it to the front of the line) has gone through a transformation between glasses one to four. First it tasted like urine, then paint stripper, then vinegar, and now it tastes like something that may at some point in its life have been in the same room as a grape.

Lucy refills her glass and swirls the liquid around. “I do declare,” she announces, in the accent her Ma wishes she would adopt at all times, “that this wine improves with age.”

While Fanny is giggling she drops a cork into her glass “Revenge is sweet.”

Formal dinner is an experience which defies description. Two hundred students wearing long black gowns over their formalwear, seated at long tables in a grand hall, watched over by portraits of the great and good of the college from days gone by.

At first glance, this would seem a respectable, even sombre occasion, but of course these are students, so it is used primarily as an opportunity to consume the maximum quantity of alcohol possible within the time frame. Whether the portraits approve of this is anyone’s guess.

By the time the Senior Man rises and crosses the room to bow to the Master, signalling the end of dinner, Lucy has entirely forgotten her early lecture. She has also decided that on reflection the second-cheapest wine isn’t so bad at all, and she might even be able to finish another bottle.

“I feel like Harry Potter!” She exclaims to Fanny, running circles around the courtyard so that her gown billows out behind her.

“Come on then Harry,” Fanny catches up with her and loops an arm around her shoulders, laughing. “Let’s take these gowns upstairs so we don’t lose them and then we can get to the bar. A couple more drinks and you’ll be flying.”

Later that night, they find themselves in Klute, Durham’s only real nightclub and absurdly proud of its reputation as the second worst in Europe. Within five minutes of being inside, they are ready to defend it with their lives, despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that their feet stick to the dance floor with every step and the playlist doesn't seem to contain a single song that is less than ten years old. 

As Fanny promised, Lucy is flying. Or at least she is until she overhears some more girls discussing her sister in the toilets and comes back to earth with a thud. This time she is actually going to fight them, but her motor skills are just slightly impaired by all the alcohol and by the time she has managed to fight her way out of the cubicle they are long gone.

“You don’t even fucking know her!” She shouts after them, startling a girl who is emerging from the next cubicle. And then she stops dead. How well does she know Charlotte now, really? And how different are the names those girls are using against her sister (‘golddigger’, ‘schemer’, ‘whore’) from the ones she herself has thrown at her over the last few years?

She storms out into the smoking area and calls her sister. Charlotte answers after two rings, sounding simultaneously half-asleep and panicked as she asks “Lucy?”

“Charlotte!” Lucy slurs, thrilled to hear her sister’s voice in a way she hasn’t been in years. “Hi!”

“Hello yourself sprat,” Charlotte laughs, sounding relieved. “Having a fun night I take it?”

“Mmm,” Lucy agrees. All the anger of a few minutes earlier has dissipated and the pleasant drunken haze has returned. She can barely even remember why she called. “I’m Harry Potter. And I can FLY!”

“Well that’s lovely to hear.” Charlotte replies, the end of her words swallowed by a massive yawn. “Did you…happen to notice the time?”

“Late?” Lucy guesses guiltily. “Did I wake you up?”

Charlotte just yawns again in response and Lucy winces. “Sorry!”

“Don’t worry,” Charlotte says. “It’s nice to hear from you. But perhaps we could reconvene at a more sociable hour?”

“Okay,” Lucy agrees readily, already distracted by the sound of a song blasting out from the dance floor. She feels lighter somehow, freer, like something broken is on the way to being mended.

The next morning, she feels mostly sick. Sick and fuzzy-headed and even more resentful at having to climb a hill for a 9am lecture.

Luckily, the lecture room is large, large enough that a hungover student should be able to take a seat in the back and doze through the class without drawing too much attention to themselves. Lucy is preparing to do just that, and in fact has already almost lapsed back into sleep when the door bangs open and in strides the most fascinating woman she has ever seen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear I have planned some plot for this fic beyond Lucy getting drunk and fucking over her future self. We might even get some more characters in the next chapter.... 
> 
> More Durham-specific things (although I did try to actually explain them a bit within the chapter this time):
> 
> Formal dinner happens twice a week and students really do wear Harry Potter style gowns and get served fancy food while trying to get as drunk as possible. 
> 
> The Senior Man is a final-year student who is elected to be head of the student body. They're called the Senior Man regardless of their actual gender because patriarchy. I'm not 100% clear on what their duties are beyond bowing to the Master to end formal dinner (and writing this is making me thing that maybe my university was secretly a cult). 
> 
> Klute was genuinely ranked second-worst nightclub in Europe in a men's lifestyle magazine...and then the worst nightclub burned in Europe burned down.


	4. Chapter 4

Growing up in London, Lucy has not had what you could call a sheltered existence. She has spent her childhood surrounded by all of humanity. She has eaten dumplings from Chinatown, beigels from Brick Lane and injera from the Ethiopian restaurant two streets from her home, and washed it down with illicit cans of beer from Polish corner shops. She has opened her bedroom window in the heat of summer and heard voices floating in speaking more languages than she can count. She has shared buses with women in sharp suits, women in ripped jeans, women in burqas, women in outfits that leave nothing to the imagination, women with neon hair, and women with tattoos on every inch of available flesh.

But she had never seen a woman quite like the one who has just walked into the lecture hall.

She is dressed in an eclectic mix of clothing. Dark jeans tucked into knee-high leather boots, a black waistcoat over a slightly baggy white shirt, a long black trench coat, and a silver-tipped cane that she doesn’t appear to be carrying as a walking aid but simply because she can (it will quickly become apparent that she does a lot of things because she can). Her hair is shaved close to her head on one side and falls in soft, dark waves to her chin on the other. (Lucy runs an absent-minded hand through her own blonde curls and wonders if she could pull off that style.)

It feels to some extent as if she ought to look ridiculous (from the sniggers coming from the row in front, the two girls there think she does) but to Lucy’s eyes she pulls it off perfectly. To say that Lucy is intrigued would be an understatement.

The lecturer shrugs off her coat, drapes it over a chair and surveys the crowd of yawning, beer-sodden students.

“Welcome to Women in History,” she says, and Lucy is stunned and delighted to hear a twinge of her own accent in the woman’s throaty voice. “I’m Dr Birch and we’ll kick off with some ground rules. Actually, make that ground rule. Just because the malevolent fuckers in scheduling decided to have us up at nine in the morning, which as it happens I am not happy about either, does not mean I will tolerate anyone sleeping in my class.”

She punctuates this statement by slamming her cane down hard on one of the desks in the front row. A pink-faced boy whose head had been lolling to his chest moments earlier jerks upright and she gives a bark of laughter before spinning on her heel and crossing to the lectern.

“Anyone else who fancies a nap, I’ve left the door open for you.” She gestures with a gloved hand towards the doorway, but everyone is either too impressed or too terrified to move and after a moment she gives a satisfied nod. “Well then, shall we begin?”

She proceeds to lead them on a whistle-stop tour of men’s incompetence through history, some of which she seems to direct specifically towards the unfortunate boy in the front row. By the end of the lecture Lucy isn’t just intrigued, she is infatuated.

She spends the next two weeks (between more nights out, nights in, pub crawls, and begrudgingly attending lectures for her other five subjects) reading everything on the reading list for Women in History and then some. When the time comes for her first seminar with Dr Birch she is determined to shine.

She is doubly pleased to have done her preparation when an entitled git with a firm belief that anything that doesn’t lie within his own personal realm of experience isn’t worth bothering with starts mouthing off in the seminar about how there is no evidence in primary sources of sexual relationships between women earlier than the twentieth century.

“First of all,” she says, staring him down. “I fail to believe that you’ve read every possible pre-twentieth century primary source, so I don’t see how you can make that kind of judgement. Secondly, primary sources are limited by the conditions in which they were produced, so a lack of evidence says more about the societal norms of the time period in question than anything else.”

The boy (Crispin, she thinks his name was) stares at her open-mouthed and Lucy feels suddenly grateful for the scholarship secondary school and its debating team.

“Excellent points, Miss…?” Dr Birch says. Lucy’s stomach turns over and all the debating team eloquence leaves her in a rush. She can barely remember how to form words.

“North…Lucy North,” she stammers out after an extremely protracted and awkward pause. Dr Bitch looks amused, like she knows exactly what effect she is having on Lucy and relishes it.

“Miss North. Both points are valid. If anyone is interested in digging into the primary sources, I’m more than happy to provide some. And I think we can expand further on that second point. What reasons might we have for struggling with primary sources when it comes to women’s history?”

Lucy leaves the history department that afternoon feeling like she’s walking on air. She runs a highlight reel of the hour in Dr Birch’s office in her head on repeat: the way the lecturer had sat in her chair, legs spread wide and fingers drumming impatiently on her thigh when the students were slow on the uptake; her wry chuckle when their arguments touched on the inconvenient truth that women have always been second-class citizens; her approving tone as she praised them. And, the memory that pops up most frequently of all, the way her lips formed around Lucy’s name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You're all too smart (or I'm too predictable)! 
> 
> Updates are likely to slow off for the next few weeks as I had the brilliant idea to start NaNoWriMo while I have two multi-chapter fics on the go. Who needs sleep anyway?


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been ignoring my urge to write fanfic for the last two weeks because all my writing time has been devoted to NaNo. But I hit 30,000 words over the weekend, so I'm ahead of schedule, and I rewarded myself with a little playtime with these two. Hope you enjoy!

You would think being completely obsessed with your lecturer would make it easier to concentrate in class. The truth, Lucy is finding, is rather the opposite. While Dr Birch has her full attention, that attention is focused more on the sweep of her hair, the sharp angle of her cheekbone, or the taut muscle of her arms than on any of the words leaving her mouth.

“Perhaps she’ll realise I’m distracted,” Lucy thinks. “Perhaps she’ll have to punish me.” The thought sets something pulsing within her.

She has spent the last week trying to think of a plan of seduction. This is a challenge given that she has never seduced anyone before, at least not anyone that matters. She has had her fair share of boys with patchy facial hair and overly inflated senses of self-worth hanging on her every word, but she finds that boys are pathetically easy to impress. All she has to do is flip her hair and flutter her eyelashes and they are ensnared. If she tried that on Dr Birch she’d probably just ask if she had something in her eye.

She has asked her friends for their advice, but their seduction tactics mostly involve copious amounts of alcohol and thus don’t translate well to the lecture theatre setting. The one person she thinks might be able to help is Charlotte, but though their relationship is vastly improved lately she still cringes at the thought of raising this particular topic of conversation.

In the end, she has settled for being teacher’s pet. This, at least, she has some experience of, though the plan falters somewhere after the teacher’s pet part. Still, it’s the only plan she has for now.

“Dr Birch?” She asks, sidling up to the lectern in what she hopes is a casual yet suggestive manner. “I was wondering if you could help me with some research I’ve been doing… on romantic friendship.” This is the second part of her plan, to mention historical lesbians as often as possible in the hope that it drops a hint. “I thought I’d focus on it for my essay but I can’t find many books in the library… about that I mean… there are plenty of other books in the library.”

She has rehearsed this in her head countless times, but it still hasn’t quite come out the way she planned. Plenty of books in the library, good one Lucy!

Dr Birch doesn’t comment on Lucy’s stammering enquiry, nor on the fact that she has, against her instincts, tried the eyelash fluttering. She mutters something about “tight-fisted arsewipes” which Lucy gathers is directed towards whoever is in charge of purchasing library books, then instructs her to follow her and is out of the door before Lucy can believe her good fortune.

Lucy has to practically run to keep up with Dr Birch as she strides down the hill. Though the lecturer is relatively small, she moves with quick, purposeful steps and has no problem scattering any crowds that happen to be in her way. By the time they reach the history department, Lucy is as hot and bothered on the outside as she feels on the inside.

Dr Birch doesn’t comment on Lucy’s red face or slightly laboured breathing, just puts her key in the lock and shoulder-barges her way into the room.

“Damned thing always sticks,” she says. “Sit, if you like.”

Lucy perches awkwardly on the nearest chair as the lecturer moves around the room, plucking books from the shelves that line the walls.

“Tea?” She asks, when she has assembled a small pile, then plucks the lid off a canister and grimaces. “Hope not, I’m out. Don’t entertain guests much.”

“Should I be honoured?” Lucy asks. It comes out needier than she intended, and she curses herself silently.

Dr Birch laughs. “Maybe I should be,” she says. “Most of my students are scared of me.” It sounds like she takes enormous pride in that fact.

Lucy swallows, trying to think of what to say next. This is the moment where she runs out of plan.

Dr Birch is examining her shelves again, and throws herself back into her chair with a sigh.

“Fraid I’ve nothing to offer you except gin,” she says. “And while it would be thematically appropriate for a discussion of the eighteenth century, it might also get me sacked.”

This is a shame, as while it would be completely inappropriate to drink gin in a lecturer’s office at ten in the morning, completely inappropriate is exactly what Lucy wants right now.

Instead, they spend a while discussing the reading Lucy has already done, and where she might go with it next. Operation Teacher’s Pet is going well, but Lucy is still struggling to see how she might go further with this plan. She wishes she had swallowed her pride and called Charlotte for advice.

“How are you finding this place?” Dr Birch asks, as the academic conversation tapers off. “A bit of a change from London?”

She thinks I’m homesick, Lucy realises, and in the next moment realises that she is a little. Maybe that is part of Dr Birch’s appeal, that she feels solidly, firmly from home.

“You could say that,” she says carefully.

“You get used to it,” Dr Birch says. “It might be a cesspit full of minor gentry, but it has a certain charm.”

Lucy bursts out laughing at that. “Did you study here?” She asks, like she hasn’t already read and memorised the woman’s entire academic record. In truth, she just wants to hear her talk.

“Mmm,” Dr Birch says. “Bit of a shock for a girl who’d never left Deptford, I can tell you.”

“My Ma’s from Deptford!” Lucy says, delighted at the coincidence. “She always said it was the biggest sacrifice she ever made for my Pa, letting him move her north of the river.”

Dr Birch raises an eyebow. “Your Ma sounds like a smart lady,” she replies, a hint of wistfulness and something else Lucy can’t place in her tone.

Lucy leaves the office more intrigued by her lecturer than ever. She isn’t even sure it stops at seduction now. She wants to know her.

“I’ll call Charlotte,” she thinks, as she climbs the stairs to her room. “She’ll know what to do.”

As it turns out, she doesn’t need to pick up the phone. Her sister is sitting on her bed.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought I would have this ready days ago because I had already written most of it when I wrote chapter five (and then decided to divide it in the middle because I love a cliffhanger). But I'm only allowing myself to write fic as a reward when I've met my NaNo word count for the day and my NaNo was refusing to cooperate so fic time has been limited. I am also having a lot of 'is Lucy in character' related angst, not helped by going back to the series for reference and realising the in-character Lucy differs depending on which season you watch. So any OOC Lucy is entirely intentional because this is an AU, not due to my issues writing her...

Although Lucy had been on her way to call her sister, she is still not best pleased to see her here. Charlotte’s presence can only mean one thing: drama.

“What are you doing here?” She asks.

“Your roommate let me in,” Charlotte replies, gesturing needlessly at Fanny who looks faintly shell-shocked. “I might have been making a bit of a scene at the gate.”

“She was,” Fanny confirms and Lucy sighs. It’s taken approximately thirty seconds of her sister’s company to reignite all of her frustration.

“I meant here as in Durham, not here as in my bedroom,” she says. “Aren’t you meant to be…where are you meant to be?”

“Scotland,” Charlotte responds with an expression of distaste. “Howard likes to shoot things in the autumn.”

Lucy bites her tongue against the retort that Charlotte chose that life when she pursued a member of the aristocracy. “So you’re here because you don’t like blood sports?”

“I’m here because I missed my sister,” Charlotte says petulantly. “Is that a crime?”

“Liar.” Lucy accuses. Charlotte has the same expression she has worn since childhood when she did something wrong: half-guilty, half-pleased. “What did you do?”

“Howard and I had a fight,” Charlotte says. “He told me I had to behave or else. And I don’t like being told what to do. So I misbehaved, and then we had another fight, and then I left.”

This explains precisely nothing and Lucy tells her sister so. Charlotte sighs heavily.

“He was accusing me of flirting,” she says at last. “But I wasn’t, or at least, not really flirting. So I thought I’d show him what it looked like when I flirted for real…with his aunt. And he didn’t like that. He didn’t like that at all. Especially not when she reciprocated.”

She looks unbearably smug for a moment, and then her expression slips and Lucy can see that even this isn’t the full story. She doesn’t know how to draw her sister out though, has never had to given Charlotte’s habit of shouting her secrets from the rooftops. Instead she says, feeling foolish but unable to contain her curiosity: “I didn’t realise you liked women…like that.”

“I like her,” Charlotte shrugs, like it’s that easy, because for her it always seems to be. She likes, she wants, she gets. Lucy is seized by a sudden and entirely unhelpful surge of jealousy.

“What you gonna do then?” She asks, the jealousy and frustration bleeding into her tone.

Charlotte shrugs again, the pride fading from her face. She looks, all of a sudden, very young and very sad. “What can I do?” She asks. “Apologise to Howard, marry him, live the life Ma wants for me…”

A tear slips down her cheek and she swipes at it crossly.

Lucy sits on the bed beside her and leans into her shoulder, all of her frustration dissipating with her sister’s tears. “You shouldn’t marry him if you don’t want to.”

Charlotte sniffs hard. “You’re just saying that because you hate him.”

“No!” Lucy defends. “Well…yes a bit. But you shouldn’t not marry him because I don’t like him”

“You called him a pompous prig.”

“He is a pompous prig. But that shouldn’t be your reason not to marry him. And you shouldn’t marry him because Ma wants you to. You have to choose for you.”

Charlotte wipes at her face again. “When’d you get so wise?”

“I’m a university girl now,” Lucy says grandly. “All the secrets of the universe are at my disposal.”

Fanny, who has been very pointedly rearranging her desk while pretending not to listen to every word of their conversation, snorts loudly at this. “If that’s the case, why’ve you been badgering me for flirting tips all week?”

Charlotte’s eyes light up. “You got your own scandal, sprat?”

“Hardly a scandal,” Lucy says. Scandal would imply something had actually happened. “Just a stupid crush.”

“A stupid crush on her lecturer.” Fanny interjects again, grinning. Lucy throws a book at her.

Charlotte, however, perks up enormously at this news. She spends the rest of the afternoon grilling Lucy endlessly on her love life, or lack thereof, and then doling out progressively more ridiculous advice. She also take three phone calls from Howard, each resulting in more colourful profanities than the last. She takes a brief nap while Lucy goes to dinner, but is awake again by the time she returns, bored and hungry.

“You might have taken me,” She complains.

“You were sleeping,” Lucy reminds her. “I brought you this.”

She throws her sister a bread roll. Charlotte stuffs the entire thing in her mouth at once and Lucy rolls her eyes.

“You’re engaged to the son of a lord,” she teases.

“You sound like Ma,” Charlotte mumbles, spraying breadcrumbs across Lucy’s duvet. “And I don’t think I’m engaged to anyone anymore. I think he’s ditched me.”

She seems fairly cheerful about this.

“If you want to be engaged to the son of a lord, I think there’s one down the corridor.” Fanny offers. “Title might not be hereditary though.”

Charlotte swallows the last of the bread and shakes her head. “No, I think I’ll enjoy my freedom for now,” she declares.

Lucy has a feeling she knows where this is going, and isn’t at all surprised when Charlotte demands to be taken out.

“I’m your guest,” she tells her. “You have to entertain guests.”

Lucy could remind her that she’s an uninvited guest, but she doesn’t. She takes her to the North Road, where the students usually don’t bother to venture. Taking Charlotte to a venue full of students would only provoke yet more drama, and Lucy thinks they’ve both had enough of that for one day.

They are trying to decide between a bar which is playing what seems to be a mix tape of songs most likely to be rejected from the charts and a bar that has a sum total of three customers, all of them old men, when Lucy spots a figure moving down the street. She freezes in place and Charlotte, who had just about decided in favour of Bad Music Bar, studies her curiously.

“What are you…oh.” She has followed Lucy’s gaze and chuckles knowingly. “Is that her?”

Lucy doesn’t respond, but the deep flush creeping up her neck gives Charlotte all the answer she needs.

“Well then.” She threads her arm through Lucy’s and marches them up the road. “Forget these dumps, we’re going wherever she’s going.”


	7. Chapter 7

They follow the lecturer up the road, through an archway that Lucy has never spared a second glance before now, and emerge in a small courtyard. It is dotted with benches, but empty save for two women passing a cigarette back and forth.

Beyond them, a large black door stands slightly ajar, and above it is a sign with letters picked out in silver.

“Titania,” Lucy reads aloud. “Like Midsummer Night’s Dream?”

Charlotte doesn’t comment on the provenance of the name, just puts a hand between Lucy’s shoulder blades and propels her forward.

Inside it is dimly lit and loud and far busier than Lucy had expected from the quiet of the courtyard, much of the area taken up by a dance floor, or at least by people dancing. Lucy scans the mass of people for the one person she’s interested in seeing, but Charlotte is directing her again, this time towards the bar.

“Drinks on me,” she declares, then extracts what looks to be a platinum Amex card from her wallet and amends. “Drinks on Howard actually, as long as he hasn’t cut me off yet.”

Lucy isn’t about to object to spending Howard’s money, and orders a gin and tonic “easy on the tonic.”

“I like your style,” the bartender tells her, liberally pouring gin from the bottle. She has a waterfall of red curls swept over to one side to expose at least a dozen hoops running up the cartilage of her right ear. Under normal circumstances, Lucy might note that she is pretty. But right now she has eyes for only one person, and she needs to find her.

She takes a sip of the drink and almost shudders at its strength. The bartender winks at her.

“Enough?” She asks. “I can put another shot in if you like.”

“No thank you,” Lucy says primly, takes another sip in the hopes that it will relax her a bit, and turns to ask Charlotte what her next move should be, only to find her sister already occupied. A tall girl with hair buzzed close to her scalp and even more piercings than the bartender is talking to her, one hand trailing up the sleeve of her jacket. Now she motions towards Lucy with the other hand and Charlotte turns, smiling.

“We’re just going to dance,” she says. “You don’t mind, do you?”

Before Lucy has the opportunity to decide whether she minds or not, Charlotte has disappeared into the heaving mass of people.

“Is that some kind of open thing?” A voice behind her asks, and Lucy turns to find the bartender studying her curiously. “Because if not you should…probably not put up with that.”

Lucy opens her mouth and closes it again, struggling to digest the question. When she does, she is horrified. “She’s not my girlfriend! She’s my sister. Although,” she adds with a tinge of resentment. “She had promised to be my wingwoman.”

The bartender grins. “I might be able to help you with that,” she offers. “What’s your type?”

Lucy takes a large gulp of her drink to fortify her courage and then almost chokes on it. She has just spotted ‘her type’ across the dancefloor.

The bartender cranes her neck to see where Lucy is gazing, then bursts out laughing. “Every fucking year,” she mutters to herself as she prepares another drink. She sets this in front of Lucy, who has managed to spill what was left of her first down her front.

“I’d say it’s on the house,” the bartender says. “But actually it’s on your sister, or ‘the miserable bastard with the tiny prick’ whose card she’s using.”

“What did you mean by ‘every fucking year’?” Lucy asks. The bartender looks uncomfortable.

“You’re in here chasing Dr Birch, correct?” She holds out a hand to steady Lucy’s glass as she almost drops it in shock. “Don’t spill that one too, you’ve wasted enough good gin already. I’ll take that as a yes?”

Lucy nods. She has a feeling she isn’t going to like what comes next, and she is entirely correct.

“There’s at least one of your type in here every year. I should know, it was me four years ago, and I’ve been watching the others try to throw themselves in her path ever since. Isn’t going to work. Nothing penetrates that shell.”

Lucy must look as crestfallen as she feels because the bartender pulls out the gin and tops up her drink until it can hardly be described as a gin and tonic. “Get that down you,” she says. “You’ll be alright. Plenty more fish in the sea as they say.”

“You got a fish?” Lucy asks, disappointment making her spiteful. She regrets it as soon as the bartender’s face falls, confirming that her comment has landed.

“Not right now,” she says, her tone decidedly frostier than before.

Lucy is in the process of downing her drink and thinking how to apologise for her unnecessary cruelty when she becomes aware of a presence behind her and an achingly familiar voice says “Stick a refill in that would ya Kit?”

Lucy swivels so fast she almost falls off her stool. Dr Birch is so close she could reach out and touch her. The lecturer looks somewhat startled to see her there.

“Miss North,” she says gruffly.

“Call me Lucy,” Lucy breathes. Out of the corner of her eye she sees the bartender roll her own eyes, but Dr Birch looks amused and even, possibly, slightly enticed.

“Lucy,” she amends, still close enough that Lucy can catch a trace of smoke on her breath. She remembers one of Charlotte’s more useful pieces of advice. Get her alone.

“You got a smoke?” She asks, although she doesn’t smoke, has never smoked, isn’t even sure which end of the cigarette to hold.

Outside it is only them, and Lucy feels grateful to Howard’s money and the bartender’s fondness for large measures because she doesn’t feel nervous anymore. She doesn’t feel cold either, though she has left her coat inside. She feels only giddy and elated and like something very important is about to happen.

Dr Birch has taken out a pouch of tobacco from the pocket of her coat and is rolling a cigarette. Lucy watches the movement of her fingers, mesmerised. The lecturer holds the pouch out to her.

“Take some if you like,” she offers.

Lucy bites her lip. She couldn’t roll a cigarette if she tried. Instead she channels as much of Charlotte as she can, looks up through her eyelashes and says “I thought we could share.”

It works in that she isn’t forced to roll her own cigarette, but it also backfires as Dr Birch bursts out laughing.

“You remind me of someone,” she says when the mirth has passed, and then her face takes on that same wistful expression Lucy had seen earlier in her office as she brings the cigarette to her lips and takes a long drag.

She passes it on to Lucy, who hardly dares inhale in case she starts to cough and makes a total fool of herself. To her surprise, she enjoys the sensation of smoke trailing down her throat, burning away the last of her nerves. She exhales a cloud of smoke into the air, passes the cigarette back.

“Someone nice I hope?” She asks.

Dr Birch gives her a sideways glance. “Nah,” she says, inhaling deeply again and tilting her head back on the exhale. “Not exactly.”

She brings her gaze back to meet Lucy’s and there is something intense and unknowable in her eyes. This is the moment, Lucy thinks, when it will happen. She just has to lean forwards slightly and then their lips will meet and then…

And then.

And then the door crashes open and there is a shout of laughter from behind them. Dr Birch jerks back, almost dropping her cigarette.

“Sorry,” a voice comes from behind them. “Didn’t mean to interrupt!”

And that is the moment when Lucy decides she is going to murder her sister.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Durham-specific notes: there wasn't a lesbian bar in Durham when I studied there, although there was a fun gay club with a light-up dancefloor in Newcastle. The name Titania is stolen from a lesbian bar in Soho that sadly no longer exists. 
> 
> I have a feeling I know how some of you are going to react to this ending and...I'm sorry?


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took approximately a thousand years longer than I'd planned and I didn't mean to leave you all on that cliffhanger for that long. This chapter...probably won't make up for it.

By the end of the next week, Lucy is certain she is going to murder her sister. All she needs is a weapon and an alibi.

When Charlotte is not sprawled across Lucy’s bed, spitting cherry stones at the wall and demanding to be entertained, she is out finding her own entertainment. She returns from these expeditions in the early hours of the morning, smug and dishevelled and wanting to give Lucy a full account of the evening’s events.

She has also taken to spending hours at a time in the bathroom (usually timing these sessions to be as inconvenient as possible for Lucy and Fanny). If they press their ears to the door they can hear her talking on the phone in a hushed voice, but they cannot make out what she is saying and, unlike her midnight expeditions, she will give no detail on these calls at all.

Then, as suddenly as she arrived, she interrupts Lucy’s frantic preparation for her next Women in History seminar to announce that she is leaving soon, within the next half hour in fact, that a car is coming to take her to Scotland.

Lucy’s mind is far away, already somewhere in the history department, and she has no desire to give her sister’s drama any headspace, but this cannot go unquestioned.

“To see Howard?” She asks. Even for Charlotte that would be a colossally bad idea, and she is thankful when her sister dismisses the question with a harsh laugh.

“He wishes,” she scoffs, but doesn’t elaborate further. Then she looks Lucy up and down, heaves her suitcase onto her bed and begins rifling through it. “Aren’t you seeing _her_ later? You’re not planning on wearing that are you?”

Lucy looks down at the outfit she has spent the best part of a week planning and wonders how long murder sentences are these days and if having Charlotte Wells as a sister could be considered a defence. “Do you have any better ideas?” She snaps.

“As a matter of fact,” Charlotte throws a shirt across the room at her and then waves an impatient hand. “Come on, put it on.”

A battle ensues over how many buttons it is decent to leave undone, a battle which Charlotte wins although Lucy has to wonder if there is any point in her wearing clothes at all with this much flesh on display.

“You can keep that.” Charlotte says. “Howard bought it for me.” She rolls her eyes. “Have you ever seen me in blue?”

She is elbow deep in her case again, and before Lucy can object to being given her sister’s cast-offs a leather jacket comes sailing towards her. “You can borrow that. It’s my favourite, but your need is greater than mine.”

Lucy wants to ask why Charlotte had brought a leather jacket and her least favourite shirt on a shooting weekend. She also wants to remind her sister that she still hasn’t explained where she’s going or what she’s doing in any level of detail, but Charlotte is already halfway out of the door, throwing a kiss and a “good luck” over her shoulder.

In the hour that follows, Lucy buttons and unbuttons her shirt somewhere in excess of seventeen times, eventually compromising on one more button done up than Charlotte had wanted but three more than she would normally leave open.

Jeremy, the arrogant twat she had torn to pieces in the last seminar, takes one look at her in Charlotte’s clothes and his mouth falls open. This is the right reaction from the wrong person but it will at least make his arguments even easier to defeat.

As it happens, he doesn’t make any arguments for her to defeat. He takes the seat opposite her and stares and stares until she wonders if his eyes might actually fall out of his head. It is immensely irritating, and apparently Lucy isn’t the only one who thinks so.

“Mr Hemmings,” Dr Birch says, not long after Lucy has caught him actually drooling over her cleavage. “Were you planning on speaking today?”

Jeremy forces his eyes reluctantly away from Lucy and towards the lecturer. He withers under her sharp gaze and mumbles something inaudible. Dr Birch tilts her head and studies him like a circling predator.

“Lost your voice have you?” She asks finally. “Then you’d better leave ‘til you recover it.”

Jeremy all but runs from the room, leaving a trail of papers in his wake. There is a ripple of nervous laughter, which Dr Birch looks as if she might join in with, but then her expression turns stern again.

“Anyone else think they might be distracted?” She asks. Her eyes sweep the room, though Lucy thinks they might hover on her just a moment longer than the others, like she might be a little distracted herself. But then the moment is gone, and she is throwing another question out to the group.

When the hour is up, the rest of the students scatter and Lucy finds herself alone in the room with Dr Birch.

“Thank you,” she says quietly. It is not, perhaps, the best conversation opener, but she has already established that those are not her forte.

Dr Birch studies her, though her eyes do not dip below Lucy’s chin. “Seemed like he was annoying you,” she says.

“Well it wasn’t for him,” Lucy says, then lets a finger trail down her cleavage, popping open the button which had been the subject of such debate earlier. Dr Birch’s eyes do move lower this time and her expression shifts, takes on a note of want.

Lucy is just thinking she might be getting the hang of this when Dr Birch steps forward, too close and not close enough at the same time. All the breath goes out of her and she stumbles back, feels her back collide with the bookcase behind her. She is trapped, and yet there is no place she’d rather be.

Dr Birch studies her face, then takes another step forward, rests her hand on the shelf behind Lucy’s shoulder.

“Who was it for?” She asks softly. Lucy’s mouth is dry, her mind blank, making a response impossible. But the lecturer just chuckles softly and holds her gaze.

“For me?” It has the inflection of a question, but her expression says she already knows the answer.

Lucy gulps and nods, still incapable of speech.

Dr Birch leans closer, her breath hot against Lucy’s ear.

“Not here,” she whispers. “Tonight.”


	9. Chapter 9

Lucy is perched on the desk in Dr Birch’s office. At the lecturer’s bidding she has made some modifications to her outfit (namely giving up entirely on the notion of buttoning her shirt and removing her tights). The only item of clothing which Dr Birch has agreed to remove is her jacket, which seems a little unfair, but voicing this complaint only provokes a smirk and a reminder that she is a “demanding little minx.”

Lucy pouts at this and begins rebuttoning her shirt in protest but finds her hands stopped by the silver tip of Dr Birch’s cane.

“Did I give you permission to do that?” She asks.

Lucy shakes her head, drops her hands to the desk. Her fingernails dig into the wood as the lecturer advances towards her and pops the button open with a single flick of her fingers.

“I think you’ll find I make the demands here,” she says softly. “Understood?”

“Yes,” Lucy breathes, her eyes fixed on the lecturer’s face. Dr Birch smiles, satisfied.

“Good girl,” she praises, and rewards Lucy by leaning in to press a kiss to her lips. Lucy leans into it but the lecturer pulls back after a moment. Before Lucy can let out another whine of protest she feels the cold tip of the cane again, this time pressed to the inside of her knee.

“Are you going to do exactly as I say?” Dr Birch asks, holding Lucy’s gaze steadily. Lucy swallows and nods.

“I need to hear you say it.”

“Yes,” Lucy whispers and then lets out a gasp as the lecturer replaces the cane with her hand.

“Yes?” Dr Birch asks as her hand slides higher.

Lucy inhales a shuddering breath…and startles awake in her castle bedroom, the slam of a door shocking her back into consciousness. Her skin feels hot and prickly and she knows without the help of a mirror that her cheeks will be flushed.

“Didn’t mean to disturb you.” Fanny laughs, stumbling into the room with an armful of books. “Having a nice time were you?”

“I was napping!” Lucy says defensively. And then she remembers. What was a dream just now will be reality tonight.

When she tells Fanny this, her roommate laughs incredulously. “Your sister rubbing off on you?” She asks, then looks around the room. “Where is she anyway?”

“Scotland.” Lucy shrugs. “She’s up to something but she won’t say what. But at least she’s not up to it in our bedroom?”

“Can’t argue with that,” Fanny agrees and then the conversation turns back to Lucy’s preparations for the evening, her sister’s drama for once eclipsed.

She has agreed to meet Dr Birch in a bar rather than her office, so that particular part of her fantasy will not be coming true tonight, but the fact that this is happening at all still feels like a particularly pleasant dream, so it not taking place in her ideal location does not give her too much cause to complain.

The same bartender as before is serving, and she grins broadly at the sight of Lucy.

“Your sister not paying for your drinks tonight?” She asks, splashing gin into a glass with her trademark disrespect for legal measures.

“No,” a voice says from behind Lucy. “I am.”

The bartender almost drops the gin bottle in shock, but recovers with a cough and a smile. “Your usual, Nance?” She asks, and the lecturer nods as she slides onto a stool.

Drinks delivered, they sit in awkward silence for a minute or two. Apparently the transition from ‘I find your lectures incredibly interesting’ to ‘I would like you to lay me down on the nearest available surface and fuck me’ is more difficult to make than either of them had anticipated. Presumably there ought to be some small talk?

Lucy opens her mouth to ask something dull and predictable, about the lecturer’s favourite colour perhaps, or whether she has been to the cinema recently. But she is cut off when Dr Birch drains her drink, squares her shoulders and says: “Shall we go upstairs?”

Apparently small talk is unnecessary.

Dr Birch explains as they climb the stairs that the bar’s owner is a friend of hers and that she is staying with her “for a while.” A brief expression of melancholy passes over her face as she says this, and Lucy suspects there is a deeper story, but she also suspects that trying to draw it out would not help with her aforementioned goal of being laid down on the nearest available surface and fucked, so she just mutters something inane about the décor and lapses back into awkward silence.

So far, this is not resembling her fantasies. When she has thought about this moment she has felt nervous, yes, but it has not been the overriding emotion. Before she had been excited, eager, desperate for this to happen. Now that it is she feels uncertain, unbalanced even. She wants this, she tells herself, she just needs Dr Birch to take charge.

She allows herself to be led into a small bedroom, sits on the edge of the bed and tilts her face upwards. From this angle Dr Birch can look down on her and the change of perspective helps bring an edge of lust back to overpower the nerves bubbling within her.

Up until this point Dr Birch had seemed less confident, less forthright than usual, but their positioning seems to restore her to herself, and that spark of want Lucy had seen in the office returns to her eyes. She reaches a hand down and traces the line of her jaw, before leaning in to kiss her. She tastes of smoke and whisky, neither of which are flavours Lucy would have professed to enjoy before this moment, but the effect carried on the lecturer’s lips is intoxicating.

After a moment, Dr Birch pulls back, but the look in her eyes tells Lucy this is not the teasing gesture of her earlier dream but something much more serious.

“You want this?” She confirms. “Yes?”

“Yes,” Lucy agrees, but as she allows the lecturer to push her back onto the bed her breath seizes in fear rather than pleasure. She seizes a handful of the duvet, wills the touch to ground her. She does want this, has dreamed of this, is finally getting this. What is there to be scared of really?

Dr Birch is above her, leaning in to claim her lips again but she stops short.

“Lucy,” she says gently. “You’re not ready.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is for hailbabel, who helped me figure out why I was completely and utterly stuck and what I needed to do to change that fact. Unfortunately, what I realised was that full smut wasn't realistic at this point. Hopefully this chapter was still enjoyable, if not satisfying ;)


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter got waylaid by Christmas and by me being absurdly confident about how quickly I could finish it because I 'knew exactly what was going to happen'. When will I learn that I never know exactly what's going to happen in this fic because the characters are in control, not me?
> 
> This chapter is fairly angsty, and we're heading into an angsty time for this story generally because there are conflicts which must be resolved (or perhaps resolved, if the characters let me).

“I am,” Lucy protests, though the words sound hollow even to her own ears. She swallows hard and repeats, her voice stronger. “I am ready, I swear.”

Dr Birch shakes her head.

“No, you’re not,” she says, her voice still gentle but very very firm at the same time. Then she backs up off the bed, stumbling slightly as she goes.

The inelegance of the movement might have made Lucy laugh if she weren’t so miserable. She leans against the headboard, curling her legs into her chest and wrapping her arms around them in a protective motion. She is suddenly aware that this makes her look even younger than she is, and she is furious. With herself for ruining this, with Dr Birch for not playing along until she could collect herself. It had only been nerves after all. If she had just carried on, surely it would have been fine?

Under the misery and the anger there is another emotion though, a treacherous sense of relief that makes Lucy even more angry when she identifies it. Not for the first time, she wishes she was more like Charlotte. Her sister wouldn’t have let a few nerves hold her back, she knows, in fact she probably wouldn’t have been nervous at all. But she isn’t Charlotte, just a weak impression dressed in her sister’s clothes.

This thought reminds her that her shirt is still gaping open, and she begins to fumble with the buttons, feeling suddenly uncomfortably exposed. As she does so Dr Birch coughs awkwardly and mutters something Lucy can’t decipher before fleeing the room.

She feels more like herself with the shirt buttoned right to the top, the Lucy who would never have dreamed of trying to seduce her lecturer, the Lucy who would have known this would all end in tears.

“Should have stuck to books,” she says to herself, which is obviously the moment when Dr Birch reappears and catches her talking to herself like a fool.

“Books are generally safer,” she says with a little quirk of the eyebrow that still, despite everything, makes butterflies explode in Lucy’s stomach. She wonders for a moment if they might still be able to salvage this, but then Dr Birch sets a cup of tea on the bedside table and perches on the bed beside her and oh god is she expecting them to talk about this?

In an attempt to avoid looking the lecturer in the eye, to delay the inevitable conversation, she fixes her eyes on the mug, then on the other objects on the table. There aren’t many: an alarm clock, a book with a bookmark poking out around halfway through (it is one Lucy herself is planning to read and she wonders if she can divert the conversation by asking about it), a single framed photograph, half-obscured by the mug of tea, which appears to show a much-younger Dr Birch.

Still attempting to put off the conversation, Lucy picks up the mug and takes a sip, which she almost spits straight back out again as the remaining half of the picture comes into view.

Lucy sets the mug down with a bang and a splash of liquid and stands abruptly from the bed, feeling hot and panicky and terribly, terribly foolish.

“I have to go,” she says, scooping Charlotte’s jacket from where she had discarded it on the floor and fumbling her way into it.

“Lucy…” Dr Birch starts, but Lucy interrupts her with as much vehemence as she can muster.

“No. I want to go. Please.”

She is already halfway out of the door as she says this, grateful that the flat’s front door is only a few paces away and that it has a simple Yale catch, meaning that she is away running down the narrow staircase before the lecturer has a chance to say anything else.

Downstairs, music is still blasting from the bar, and she picks up her pace in case anyone inside recognises her. She is grateful that the castle is only five minutes away and that over-emotional students making a dash across town late at night are a common enough occurrence that nobody tries to stop her, or help her, or even spares her a second glance.

Still, she is relieved once she is back in the safety of her own bedroom, and even more so when she realises that Fanny is not yet back from her own night out. She will have to discuss all of this, she knows, and soon, but she wants one night to bear the humiliation in private.

She curls into her bed, still dressed head to toe in Charlotte’s clothes, pulls the duvet over her head and cries herself to sleep.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has taken approximately one thousand years for three reasons. Firstly I've been trying to write original stories this year, which is fun but as it turns out coming up with your own characters and settings is Hard so it's taking a lot of my time. Secondly I'm caught between one Big Dramatic Moment and another and all the filler in between feels very...filler-ish. And finally I kept writing more words in sprints on the Finish Your Fic discord without editing any of the old words so I just had an unmanageable pile of words and despite literally being an editor for work I hate editing my own stuff.

Lucy spends most of the next week moping, while pretending to the outside world that everything is fine thank you very much. Only Fanny gets to witness any of the moping, and even she is expected to buy into the lie that Lucy is “studying very hard actually, do you have any idea how many essays I have due by the end of term?”

She dutifully swallows this, pretending not to notice that the screen of Lucy’s laptop is more often filled with old episodes of Grey’s Anatomy than anything that could be considered work. She also doesn’t comment on the fact that Lucy hasn’t been to a single meal in the Great Hall in the last week.

Instead, she has taken to bringing her “snacks to fuel your brain for all that studying.” Lucy isn’t sure an entire McDonalds Happy Meal could rightly be considered a snack, nor does she know where Fanny managed to source it given there isn’t actually a McDonalds in Durham, but she is grateful all the same.

She is also grateful that Fanny doesn’t pry, as she hasn’t managed to get everything straight in her own head yet, never mind being able to explain it to anyone else.

By the time Thursday rolls around though, Fanny has clearly decided that her grace period for moping is over, as she tears into the room shortly after six in the evening demanding that Lucy “get out of that bed and get ready for formal, and don’t say you’re too busy because I know you handed in an essay this morning so you’ve earned a break.”

She suspects that Fanny is hoping that a glass of wine will turn her into a weeping mess, desperate to spill her secrets. But Fanny has only known her a matter of weeks and doesn’t yet know that Lucy is perfectly capable of taking a secret to the grave if she so desires.

So she plasters on a smile and spends the evening sparkling furiously. She throws corks into glasses up and down the table (earning the respect of the rugby lads seated to her left and the ire of the third years on her right who “just wanted to enjoy our food in peace, is that too much to ask?”) She talks and jokes and drinks and dances and even allows one of the bland posh boys who she has caught staring at her across the dining hall to kiss her a little (but only a little, she wouldn’t want him getting any ideas).

She is having fun, she tells herself as she stumbles home, Styrofoam carton of chips in one hand and too-high heels in the other. This is what university life is meant to be about, drinking and dancing and kissing and fun. She shouldn’t be chasing after women old enough to be her mother.

A nasty little voice in the back of her head whispers that she could insert another word into that last sentence and it would still be accurate, but she stifles it with potatoes and vinegar. She has become an expert at eating her feelings in the last week.

***

When her alarm goes off the next morning, Lucy contemplates not bothering to get up. The wine has given her a headache, which means she has even less desire to face the day. There is nothing she feels less like doing than sitting in a lecture room listening to Dr Birch, watching Dr Birch, trying to process the increasingly complex feelings that the mere thought of Dr Birch now throws up. It would really be much easier not to go.

But as she rolls over to go back to sleep, she cannot shake the feeling that by not going she is giving in somehow, that Dr Birch will think, will know, that she couldn’t handle even turning up to her lecture.

So it is pride, in the end, which propels her out of bed, up the hill and into the lecture theatre. She forgoes her usual front row seat (pride can only carry her so far) and focuses as hard as possible on the PowerPoint slides, anything to avoid accidentally catching Dr Birch’s eye.

But of course she would be fooling herself if she thought she could make it through the lecture unscathed. Even if she closed her eyes completely, she would still be able to hear Dr Birch’s firm, slightly gravelly voice.

She remembers a day, not so long ago really though it feels like a decade has passed, when she realised that accent came from home, that that was part of its appeal, and her stomach turns over at her own stupidity.

“My Ma’s from Deptford,” she remembers herself saying, remembers how foolishly pleased she was at the coincidence, the connection. And then of course she is so busy berating herself for not realising sooner that she completely misses the fact that the lecture has finished, the other students are gone and she is alone, staring at the now blank wall. Alone except for Dr Birch.

The one comfort in the situation is that the lecturer looks almost as awkward as Lucy feels, mouth opening and closing like a fish as she struggles for words.

This, absurdly, almost makes Lucy laugh. Because the difficult conversation that Dr Birch is currently psyching herself up for is nothing really. Admittedly it is probably a conversation to be had in a time and place other than ten in the morning in a lecture theatre with the next group of students waiting on the other side of the door. It is a navigable conversation though, it would hold questions and catharsis and even, possibly, solutions.

But how exactly does one start a conversation about why the woman you almost fucked has a photograph of your mother in her bedroom?


End file.
